Food Preference Experiment

Nanchantress

Nanchantress

Sixth Instar
I placed 1/8 teaspoonful of 6 various foods I thought roaches would find appealing in a tray. I taped the tray to the bottom of a Rubbermaid tub to prevent spillage. I added approximately 20 Madagascar hissing cockroach nymphs to the tub.

After 36 hours, the FruitFestiv portion was completely gone.

FruitFestiv capsules contain apple, noni, orange peel, peach, lemon peel, grape, cranberry, raspberry, cherry, acai, mango, elderberry, black currant, pomegranate, strawberry, papaya, banana, blackberry, plum, goji berry, blueberry, pineapple, prune, lactobacillus acidophilus, and an enzyme blend. I think I bought the capsules at Walmart in the vitamin section.

I will post again with another picture after another 36 hours or so. Wonder what their second preference will be?

 
What fun! I love how you did this! I try stuff too, but never with all of them on one "table" !! All of my hissers adore bee pollen. That gets chowed down as soon as I put a little in their tanks. I will have to look for that fruit festive! Looks like lots of yummies in that! Thank you for sharing your experiment!

 
Cindy, I'll put bee pollen as a choice in another experiment ;) Is it granules or powder? What I'm planning to do is find their top 3 or so preferences and then make a custom roach chow mix. I might do a separate experiment with 6 different types of dog food and see if they have an obvious favorite. It's about 26 years too late for a high school science fair project though... hahaha!

 
Never to late!! I just had some capsules.. and opened them up, put in a tiny dish and it was the first thing they ran to.

 
These food experiments are always fun (for us and the roaches)!

What do you usually feed them though? My roaches go more enthusiastically for foods that they don't get often, like grapes, oranges, and (in the past) fish food; if it becomes a regular part of their diet they become a bit more laid-back. So there was likely an ingredient or two in the FruitFestiv that was either a little new to them or that they lacked nutritionally.

 
Ralph, I always have dog food and fish food available in a dish. Then I give them fruit or vegies about twice a week. They don't really get too excited about anything, except maybe canned pumpkin.

 
Final Results: FruitFestiv the clear favorite, followed by VeggieFestiv and Spiru-Tein Banana drink mix.

January 27th

February 1st

 
I like the little platter you put everything in . I've never tried bee pollen or the fruit festive stuff. Next time I'm at walmart I'll pick some up.

 
My Dubia roaches LOVE banana-orange baby food, and once a month they eat beef baby food (without lemon juice) as a protein boost.

 
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